Sharifi Mona, Dryden Eileen M, Horan Christine M, Price Sarah, Marshall Richard, Hacker Karen, Finkelstein Jonathan A, Taveras Elsie M
Division of General Pediatrics, Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2013 Dec 6;15(12):e272. doi: 10.2196/jmir.2780.
Text messaging (short message service, SMS) is a widely accessible and potentially cost-effective medium for encouraging behavior change. Few studies have examined text messaging interventions to influence child health behaviors or explored parental perceptions of mobile technologies to support behavior change among children.
Our aim was to examine parental acceptability and preferences for text messaging to support pediatric obesity-related behavior change.
We conducted focus groups and follow-up interviews with parents of overweight and obese children, aged 6-12 years, seen for "well-child" care in eastern Massachusetts. A professional moderator used a semistructured discussion guide and sample text messages to catalyze group discussions. Seven participants then received 3 weeks of text messages before a follow-up one-on-one telephone interview. All focus groups and interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Using a framework analysis approach, we systematically coded and analyzed group and interview data to identify salient and convergent themes.
We reached thematic saturation after five focus groups and seven follow-up interviews with a total of 31 parents of diverse race/ethnicity and education levels. Parents were generally enthusiastic about receiving text messages to support healthy behaviors for their children and preferred them to paper or email communication because they are brief and difficult to ignore. Participants anticipated high responsiveness to messaging endorsed by their child's doctor and indicated they would appreciate messages 2-3 times/week or more as long as content remains relevant. Suggestions for maintaining message relevance included providing specific strategies for implementation and personalizing information. Most felt the negative features of text messaging (eg, limited message size) could be overcome by providing links within messages to other media including email or websites.
Text messaging is a promising medium for supporting pediatric obesity-related behavior change. Parent perspectives could assist in the design of text-based interventions.
Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01565161; http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01565161 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6LSaqFyPP).
短信（短消息服务，SMS）是一种广泛可用且可能具有成本效益的促进行为改变的媒介。很少有研究探讨过通过短信干预来影响儿童健康行为，或探究父母对移动技术支持儿童行为改变的看法。
我们的目的是研究父母对于通过短信支持与儿童肥胖相关行为改变的接受度和偏好。
我们对马萨诸塞州东部前来进行“儿童健康”护理的6至12岁超重和肥胖儿童的父母进行了焦点小组讨论和后续访谈。一名专业主持人使用半结构化讨论指南和示例短信来推动小组讨论。然后，七名参与者在进行一对一后续电话访谈之前接收了为期3周的短信。所有焦点小组讨论和访谈均进行了录音并逐字转录。我们采用框架分析方法，系统地对小组和访谈数据进行编码和分析，以确定突出和趋同的主题。
在对总共31名不同种族/族裔和教育水平的父母进行了五次焦点小组讨论和七次后续访谈后，我们达到了主题饱和。父母们普遍热衷于接收短信以支持孩子的健康行为，并且比起纸质或电子邮件通信，他们更喜欢短信，因为短信简短且难以忽视。参与者预计孩子的医生认可的短信会得到很高的回应，并表示只要内容相关，他们每周愿意接收2至3次或更多次短信。保持短信相关性的建议包括提供具体的实施策略和个性化信息。大多数人认为，通过在短信中提供指向其他媒体（包括电子邮件或网站）的链接，可以克服短信的负面特征（例如，消息大小有限）。
短信是支持与儿童肥胖相关行为改变的一种有前景的媒介。父母的观点有助于基于短信的干预措施的设计。
Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01565161；http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01565161（由WebCite存档于http://www.webcitation.org/6LSaqFyPP）。
